Portrait of students: Sabine Reister - moderator of change

Not everything can be said with words. Visual communication can sometimes explain more than long speeches. The designer Sabine Reister has been working in the paper industry for about ten years and is now production manager at a large specialised wholesale group. Designing digital and analogue media is no longer part of her everyday professional life in the strict sense. She deals with the design of processes, benchmarking and product analyses, customer and supplier dialogue as well as international contacts. But she combines management with design in her work: problems are visualised and looked at from many sides to find a solution. She also uses this method in her training courses, for example on the certification of print products. Sabine Reister is the main person responsible for FSC and PEFC certification, two environmental seals, in her company: "For example, we ask where the wood for our paper comes from. At the beginning, I didn't have much to do with sustainability, but then I trained myself further in this area. That's how I became an environmental expert in our company."

But the ecological perspective is not enough for Sabine Reister. She is also interested in the social perspectives of sustainability. "I am convinced by Leuphana's humanistic aspirations. If you apply this ideal, then you also act sustainably. I want to touch people like people," says the 49-year-old. Since April 2020, the product manager has been studying innovation management part-time at Leuphana Professional School. The certificate programme deals with topics such as marketing and sales, project management, success factors, corporate controlling, innovation processes and self-management. 

Sabine Reister had actually been looking forward to the classroom events in particular. But the Corona pandemic changed everything. The designer made a virtue of necessity and used the travel time saved to take more courses in the Bachelor of Business Administration, which also includes Innovation Management. "I am now not only getting to know the economic side of numbers better, but am also dealing with empirical research and statistical analysis. This new perspective is very exciting for me", says Sabine Reister. But she also brings social sustainability to her company. "Since I've been studying at Leuphana, we pay more attention to gender-appropriate language and start every meeting with a positive impulse," she reports. Studying at the Professional School has also given her a great deal of self-confidence: "I can now answer in far more areas: 'Yes, I know'." Her employer supports her further education.

The mother of two grown-up children wants to help make the world fit for grandchildren. That's why she decided to follow up the Innovation Management certificate programme with the part-time MBA Sustainability Management. She can imagine teaching at the academic level after graduation and would like to have an intensive exchange with young people: "We need facilitators of change now."